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About

Alen is the Deputy Chief Officer Capability & Infrastructure with the Country Fire Authority. After gaining Master of Science (Forestry) Degree, Alen started his working career in Croatia as a forester from where he emigrated to New Zealand in 1995. He worked as a Fire Management Officer with the Forestry Corporation and a Technical Assistant - Fire Research Group with the NZ Forest Research Institute.

After three years, Alen moved to Tasmania where he worked with Forestry Tasmania for seven years in variety of roles; the last two as the Manager Fire Management Branch.

Since 2005, he has been working in Melbourne, Victoria. For the first seven years he worked with Department of Sustainability and Environment, a majority of time as the Assistant Chief Officer Capability. In 2012, Alen started working in his current role with CFA.

Alen has presented at the numerous national and international conferences on fire research and management topics.

Send a message to Alen Slijepcevic

Lead end user

This project is seeking a 2-year postdoctoral fellow in spatial analysis and modelling working on disaster risk reduction planning. For more information and to apply, please click here.

What if an earthquake hit central Adelaide? A major flood on the Yarra River through Melbourne? A bushfire on the slopes of Mount Wellington over Hobart?

‘What if?’ scenario modelling through this project is helping government, planning authorities and emergency service agencies think through the costs and consequences of various options on preparing for major disasters on their infrastructure and natural environments and how these might change into the future.

The research is based on the premise that to reduce both the risk and cost of natural disasters, an integrated approach is needed to consider multiple hazards and a range of mitigation options.

This study will examine in-depth lessons from historical emergencies and disasters by engaging with state and federal response agencies, as well as those supporting response and recovery, and local government.

Emergencies are increasing in complexity, duration, and the number of agencies involved. This is likely to lead to an increasing number of errors being made, breakdowns in teams and degraded operational situations. These problems will play out within the context of a decreasing tolerance in the community and their political representatives. Rather than distributing the blame to individuals we need to acknowledge that errors and breakdowns in emergency management teams will occur, and that it is important to seek and manage them in a mature and systematic way.
The current project has three main research streams that are examining team monitoring, decision making and organisational learning.